I think in CCD the microbes play a major part. You find the very same situation in bee colonies as is with human beings. The young bee emerging from it cell is virtually germ-free. It receives the "milk" of the nursing bees - with it all the microbes needed for their health.

I think this transmission is the key to honeybee health and maybe a dysfunction of this transmission the cause of CCD.

Bernhard

Last edited by zaunreiter on Sun Feb 16, 2014 9:29 am; edited 1 time in total

Thanks Bernhard,
Great job on the presentation and the translation. As usual I read your post all the way through and feel a lot more informed. Actually I learned more about soil science in your post than I have the rest of my life.
You are a true asset to this forum and your posts are most appreciated.
Thanks again

The first thing to change is the cultivation of the ground. There humus is produced which all other animals and plants health depend on. You can't stay healthy eating food without sufficient nutritions. For example you have to drink 20 litres of milk produced from silage to replace all the nutritions from 1 litre of hay milk. (Milk from the Alps. Lots of herbs.) You can't drink so much milk of course and of course you can't eat so much to replace the lacking nutritions usually found in food produced on high humus fields.

Same with the bees. All the stuff is missing in the bees' food. Nutritions. What happens is, that microbes inside you, or inside the bees turn against their hosts, if lacking nutritions. That's what makes you chronically ill.

So we should care for the humus in the ground. But it needs more than 8 years to get the humus production going. The ground is like a huge gut, if it is ill and full of the wrong microbes it needs time to get rid of them or keep them in check.

My gardening is not based on feeding plants but instead feeding the Soil Food Web through applying compost tea, cover material like wood chips and dry grass ... feeding the fungi, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, worms, algae etc...
and all them in return feed and protect the plants.

So we should care for the humus in the ground. But it needs more than 8 years to get the humus production going. The ground is like a huge gut, if it is ill and full of the wrong microbes it needs time to get rid of them or keep them in check.

What about land which has been left fallow (unused) for more than 20/30 years - would that fix things? I'm planting on an acre like this at the moment, soil is very dark and crumbly, lots of worms, insects and so on.

It is shame that T. Olofsson gave up on his reasearch with Top Entrances-solid bottom just so he could develop this money making one.
His early research showed that organic acid from honey production are heavier than air and stay in the lower part of the hive (brood nest). Bottom entrance allows these acids to escape the hive.

I have heard from another scientist that Tobias gave up on this top entrance research after going into this Symbeeotic one.
I guess he cant make any money on top entrances

Best bee healer is biodiversity, continuity in various pollen and nectar source.
It is time we stop fiddling with toys for boys and cut to the chase! We as well as our governments must heal the environment and replace mono crop fields into biodiverse ones!
We all agree that there is no silver bullet! So why supporting this one?

The bottom line is; We can not support 97% of population with 3% which are farmers. We (super market consumers) are the reason for all this mess. When will we (our governments includes) understand that we must hit the balance between the System and Self-reliance to fix all the worlds issues?!
The ONLY WAY to heal the planet (and thus healing the bees) is by getting back at least 30% of people back to land, running organic biodiverse small scale homesteads, and feeding the local population.

Im not into going back to stone age! Only to strike balance between the system and self-reliance. We can not only continue and sit in our offices and blame the world.

Please don't distract from the topic, which is microbes and not top entrances. I am really sick to death of it. Especially the side note about Tobias making money out of his findings. This was absolutly unnecessary.

You better ask Tobias why he gave up studying top entrances. Maybe because it is useless. Maybe. You never know until you ask.

Mein freund,
are you implying that biodiverse environment does nothing to do with honey bee health (thread title) ?
Are you saying that biodiverse environment cant provide bees with enough probiotics? Wonder how they survived all these millions of years without human intervention.

The thing about Tobias I've heard of a bee scientist who knows him. It matters little if its true or not. The fact remains that approaching bee issues without biodiversity is useless. Why? The main contributor Mr. Mono crop Agriculture remains. Look around you Berhard. What do you see? Im guessing mono crop fields all the way to the horizont.
I dont respect 10 years of experimenting. Monsanto and Bayer experimented longer yet we dont respect them.
I totally agree that probiotics are of great importance but dont you agree that by bringing the biodiversity to life all issues of bees will vanish?
How is biodiversity not part of this thread?

Ah, i see. We are maybe overwhelmed by the vastness of damaged ecosystem and rather tackle one puzzle at a time. Im afraid we have no much time left for nowadays science. We need holistic science approach on a grand scale.

Its very easy to fix the environment. Its only to plant biodiverse plant life over the monocrop fields. I will volunteer for this, im sure many others will too.

The main problem to bee health (and health of planet) is 97% of our population is expecting food from the 3% that are farming it. Full stop. Symbeeotic cant fix the issue. Also full stop.

We always focus on what is missing in the hive and we battle to place that in or take some away. Instead, let the bees seal (close/lock) the hives and we turn our focus to fixing that we are destrying; the environment we all depend on.

I dont mind your "one puzzle at a time" scientific approach but please dont shush me for taking a more holistic approach to the issue at hand.

... Are you saying that biodiverse environment cant provide bees with enough probiotics?

You got it! Yes, this is what I experienced. At least in my area and this true for most of Europe, there is no humus in the soil. No humus, no life! So the nutrients are not there anymore! For example: one litre organic milk contains twenty times as much essential components than industrially produced milk. (Fed on soy.) In order to get the nutrients a human has to drink 20 litres of milk to get all the nutirents needed. You cannot drink that much.

Same with bees! Yes, there is pollen - but it is empty, no humus no quality pollen. To top that fungicides do stop fermentation of bee bread. That leads to less essentials. Since some as vitamin B is exclusively produced by fungi in bee bread. Bees must consume many times the amount, and still lack essential nutrients. Bees can't eat as much to make it up.

Bees and humans are doomed because of missing humus in the soil, humus = microbes, that build up organic matter. Not the destruents.

Che Guebuddha wrote:

...Wonder how they survived all these millions of years without human intervention.

Easy answered. Without humans. Do you want to kill all people in the World? (You don't have to. Humankind is killing itself right now.)

Che Guebuddha wrote:

... farming ... Symbeeotic cant fix the issue.

For sure. But in case you didn't notice. It is no more longer about fixing things. It's purely about survival. I want to preserve bees as a species and save them from extinction. I simply realised that a little playing natural won't help, because we are too deep into disaster already.

Symbeeotic and such stuff can help to survive this disaster that is taken place right now. Pollen collection, decontaminating hives, and other stuff, too. Survival skills.

You got it! Yes, this is what I experienced. At least in my area and this true for most of Europe, there is no humus in the soil. No humus, no life! So the nutrients are not there anymore!

You are talking about the damaged environment not the biodiverse environment which we dont have in most parts of Europe (and wider).

Im all for survival at this stage, sure, but ONLY if the main focus is on changing this humus depleted mono culture into humus rich biodiversity culture. You said it yourself "put a wood pole in the ground and see what happens". Totally agree with you hence me covering my greenhouse soil with decomposing wood chips (earth worms will pull it down gradually so no NO3 gets robbed).

You said also that tree roots introduce huge ammountsof sugars into the soil feeding bacteria and fungus which in return feed other micro life. Plant roots benefit from this co relation too.

Trees enrich the soil with fallen leaves. Grasses die at the end and become humus. Various elements of various plants introduce different properties. Humus from biodiverse plant life is far superior than humus from a mono crop (i know a farmer who grows Leek and he prides him self by introducing damaged Leek leaves back to the soil creating "humus").

I dont think the battle is over until its over. When the last plant dies then I will agree with you on this. Until then I will do my best to inspire as many people as possible to go back to land, and try to make our government understand the importance of it. We, small holder farmers, need support from all dirrections to be able to bring soil back to life and hence probiotics back into the hives.

I know this idea seems overwhelming and extremely complicated to solve. The change must start with me first. I cant wait for others to do it for me.

Each part of land, even if small, turned into biodiverse plant life counts. Each planted flower counts. If all 7 billion people plant only one tree ...
I know its possible and I will actually do something about it. Hence me letting go of "urban life style" and going back to Earth.

This is my view on how to enrich microbes in a bee colony. Yours can be different and both have place in this thread imo.

Last edited by Che Guebuddha on Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:42 am; edited 1 time in total

I just wrote a small email to Tobias and Alejandra to ask them if they know how come the bees don't have enough of these lactic acid bacteria any more. I may have some ideas about it, but they have studied this for 10 years so...

I wrote:
How come the bees don't have enough of these lactic acid bacteria any more? Which factors influence or could be influencing this? I'm thinking that selection traits such as less defensive behaviour, less swarming, higher productivity and so on, undermine the bees' vitality. But also varroa treatments such as with thymol products or formic acid could possibly kill these beneficial bacteria? But I'm also thinking that you as scientists may really know why the level of lactic acid bacteria drops in so many bee colonies...

If and when I receive an answer, I'll post it here...

Luc P. (BE)

(edit)

Quote:

a little playing natural won't help

I completely agree! Anyone that takes this honeybee conservation seriously, will take every chance to make a difference. Doing just enough is not enough. Let's go all the way.

I think the thing to remember with any feed supplement is that a good healthy diet is the best choice and a supplement is a poor second. I can see something like this becoming a bit like any other treatment with commercial beekeepers, in that they routinely use it because they don't have time to assess each colony.
It certainly does sound like this is far better treatment than continuing to throw antibiotics and miticides at them, but as Dusko appears to be saying, it is going to be used by commercial beeks in particular, to support the current status quo of mass monocrop pollination and transportation etc, with no view to changing to a better system. Therefore this supplement, which sounds like it is, in itself, a good thing, will be used to shore up a bad system.

My other concern would be that a large increase in one particular bacteria used on a regular basis, might upset another important balance of nature within the gut of the bee to the disadvantage of other (perhaps less important but nevertheless valuable) bacteria. I'm not a biologist so this is just a hunch.

Have been thinking about this in relation to human nutrition. (Well, I know: you can't really extrapolate from rats to humans, and therefore, probably not reliably from humans to bees! ... but.... ) As has already been pointed out: after eg. courses of antibiotics or poor diet it can take humans a long time to re-grow their own personal colony of internal bacteria, with real consequences to their health. Hence: courses of probiotics. (I've read though that the internal colony is very individual; bought probiotics would never really replace the original. Good nutrition and overall attention to health are needed for re-growing that, and of course no supplement ever makes up for these.)

With this in mind though it sounds quite reasonable doesn't it? that making available the appropriate probiotics to bees who've been treated with antibiotics, or who've had to spend some time on sugar feeding - whether by supplementation or in their environment, might well help them back into balance. (Yes, I also was thinking: Many essential oils have bacteria-inhibiting properties too. I do then wonder a bit about thymol etc. in this context?)

Im the first one to admit that looking at the wider picture and trying to fix it is EXTREMELY overwhelming and makes my mind want to block it away, to igore it, sweep it under the carpet and adapt some "silver bullet" scientific "one puzzle at a time" solutions.

I think this is because our minds are conditioned by our cultural evolution which is very much fueled by our disconected ego-self. Or not.

When I look at the satelite google maps over Germany, Denmark, South of Sweden I get dishearted, discouraged by the wastness of mono-crop monster fields. I feel so tiny and weak infront of them. How can I, a tiny wreched human possibly make a difference against such profit orientated mega-system?

But then I see what people like Vandana Shiva and others similar to her are doing and I feel my tiny heart dares to beat stronger, it gets inspired and those mono crop monsters seem less scary. All seems possible. And even if I fall in this battle I will die in peace knowing that I fought for the betterment of this magical mother earth.

Conserving wild bees

Research suggests that bumble bee boxes have a very low success rate in actually attracting bees into them. We find that if you create an environment where first of all you can attract mice inside, such as a pile of stones, a drystone wall, paving slabs with intentionally made cavities underneath, this will increase the success rate.

Most bumble bee species need a dry space about the size a football, with a narrow entrance tunnel approximately 2cm in diameter and 20 cm long. Most species nest underground along the base of a linear feature such as a hedge or wall. Sites need to be sheltered and out of direct sunlight.